Cold War Studies at Rhodes University will be given a considerable boost in early November with the organisation and hosting of a symposium called “After the Wall: 20 years on. Scholarship and Society in southern Africa”. The conference will take place on the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, from 8 – 9 November.
The fall of the Berlin wall signalled the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well the end of the Cold War. It also had an immediate impact on southern African where the Cubans withdrew from Angola, South Africa ended its occupation of Namibia, and a relatively peaceful domestic transition from apartheid to democracy was achieved.
This conference offers an opportunity to reflect on how post-Cold War/Colonial developments have affected human society and scholarship in the region. It also examines how post-Cold War thinking continues to shape the world in which we live. It seeks to encourage inter/multi-disciplinary approaches to these issues and participation from across the academic disciplines.
South Africa’s former foreign minister, Pik Botha, will speak at the opening plenary session on the evening of Sunday, 8 November. “South Africa was deeply affected by the Cold War and Pik Botha was a major player in the discourses around this issue,” said History Professor and conference organiser, Gary Baines. “His insights into the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the thinking of the Nationalist Government to free Nelson Mandela and initiate the processes of change are still largely unknown. We look forward to Mr Botha offering new insights into this historical puzzle.”
Professor Valdimir Shubin, Deputy Director of the Institute for African Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences, will address a plenary session on Monday morning. His talk is titled “Moscow and South Africa: before and after the fall of the Wall.” The symposium will take the form of parallel sessions chaired by Rhodes lecturers and fellow delegates. Delegates presenting papers at the conference come from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, and Moscow.
Conference delegates can look forward to a retrospective discussion of the Cold War that could aid in understanding the many ways in which it still affects the world. “The Cold War remains with us in so many, many ways. Almost every day, it reveals its secretive life,” said Peter Vale, Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics at Rhodes. “Only by discussing these can we understanding how we were all captive of the big ideas which so often determine the way of the world.”
Rhodes is the only university in South Africa to offer a course in Cold War Studies. It is taught between the university’s department of History and the department of Political and International Studies. The active programme regularly invites high-profile speakers such as Ronnie Kasrils, former Minister of Water Affairs and later Minister of Intelligence, and Dr Leon Wessels, a minister in the last apartheid cabinet, who jointly took part both in a seminar and a well-attended public meeting earlier this year.
For further information, contact Liza Colloty on l.colloty@ru.ac.za or 046 603 8901 or visit the conference website: